


Place

by captainodonewithyou



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Depression, F/M, tw: depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 08:03:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4997029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainodonewithyou/pseuds/captainodonewithyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Static Quake. What might have happened if Coulson had not interceded.  Canon divergence post 3x03 (A Wanted Inhuman). Rated M because it is all about suffering with depression.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Place

He has the room next to hers, only because she couldn’t think of a way to turn giving him an adaptable safe-box alongside Joey into a reasonable request—and because the persistent little voice prodding at the back of her skull insists that if it were her, if their situations were reversed—he would never let her be locked up—for her safety or not.

She thinks he is already trapped to a degree, anyway. Locking him in a box with only the thoughts that are tearing him apart regardless—she can’t justify it, even if she thinks knowing exactly where he is might ease her mind. She hasn’t been able to fall asleep—sitting on her sheets and leaning on the wall that separates her room and his. She still hasn’t grown used to how blackened the underground base becomes when the lights go out—and she stares into the solid dark around her, thinking of him in the room beside her and wondering if the darkness fogging his mind matches the emptiness in front of her own eyes.

When she told a reluctant Coulson to assign him the room it was in another attempt soothe the part of her mind that hasn’t stopped buzzing anxiously, reminding her at every breath that he is not _okay_.

Now it whispers that he is only getting worse.

She has uprooted him from his _place_ —his patients, his responsibilities—and she hasn’t forgotten how he fell apart the last time he didn’t have something to occupy his destruction. It’s odd, the shadows beneath the eyes that she remembers thinking were the clearest shade of blue she has ever seen. The muddled gloom that fogs them whenever she calls them to mind now.

Having him close is supposed to make it easier but knowing he is there, knowing he is tangible and breathing and _hurting_ with only a wall between the two of them—it only makes it harder that she _isn’t sure_ how to help him. How to fight a monster that lives in his own head. It isn’t palpable, isn’t conquerable—not anything she can point a gun at and force away. And she isn’t _him_ , isn’t practiced in soft words and reassuring smiles and guidance so gentle you hardly know it is there.

She may have saved him from the people hunting him, but the more immediate threat, the one that has had hold on him for far longer—she can’t simply hide him away from it.

The thoughts come at a persistent flow, ebbing at her until she can’t sit still any longer, slipping her bare feet to the cool ground and padding out of her room.

She raps softly on his door and when he opens it a moment later the lights are off, eerie base darkness extending into his room—but she knows instinctively the tiredness is stained into his expression—she can feel his exhaustion in the unsteady buzz of his usually busy molecules and it is draining.

“Everything alright?”

The question is so ironic, coming from his lips. Tired and dry but genuine, concerned. She thinks maybe he just needs something, someone else to worry about that isn’t _him_.

She swallows, shifting her feet to try to ease their contact with the ground and wishing she had worn socks.

“I need you to do something. For me.”

She adds the afterthought because she thinks she is growing to understand him, the him in front of her now, better than before. He is not different from Afterlife Lincoln, not at the core—despite what he might believe.

When he shifts under her pleading stare she knows she is right.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?”

She knows the answer to that, too, before he shakes his head slowly. Faint light from the end of the hallway catches in his drained eyes, looking softly down into hers.

“What do you need?” he asks in the weary monotone that she is beginning to associate with him. “For, uh, me to do?”

She is suddenly not at all sure how to say it. She can’t see his face, can’t read his expression through the shadows and her words are hard and delicate and the last thing she wants to do now is offend him, or hurt him or scare him off. She swallows again, slower, biting at her cheek.

It would be easier over a drink.

“Do you want to, uh, get a beer or something? From the kitchen?”

She thinks he might tense slightly, but she cannot be sure through the darkness. She isn’t sure she _blames_ him. It is some godforsaken hour and she has come banging on his door asking for mysterious favors and offering him alcohol.

When he speaks his voice is oddly small.

“Maybe… just a water.”

“There’s this guy. Um. Andrew. I think you should talk to him.”

He nods slowly, staring into the cup his long fingers are wrapped around for a beat too long—before glancing sideways at her, flashing her a faint pained smile that is more like a twitch of the corner of his lips—humor not quite reaching his murky blue eyes.

“You can say he’s a psychologist, Daisy. It’s alright—I won’t break that easily.”

He pauses, glancing back at the still water, brow furrowing.

“I’m just… not sure that is how you should be handling this. Handling me.”

He corrects himself a long moment too slowly, making her heart clench harder in her chest. He refers to himself so _distantly_ —like he is an object out of place, a problem to be solved—with such an eerily quiet casualness that she struggles to wrap her mind around his words.

She _really_ wishes she had a beer. She sets her own water onto the counter in front of her, prodding it away from her as she searches for a response—staring at the trail of liquid it leaves in its wake and running a finger through it.

He speaks again before she can.

“I appreciate what you’re doing for me. I do, really,” he pauses and she can hear the ‘but’ poised ready on his tongue. Sure enough, he continues—voice quivering just audibly. “But I _killed_ someone. I should be in a cell and… I think you know that.”

Frustration swells in her chest.

“Because when you took me into the Afterlife I hadn’t just killed someone?”

His jaw tenses and he finally looks at her again, eyes conflicted.

“You were still learning how to control your powers and the guy you took out was _shooting at you_. Its different. I am under control. I have been for _years_ , and I killed my best—my _only_ —friend.”

His voice still crumbles at his last words and he looks quickly down and away from her, pressing his eyes shut hard.

She breathes in slowly, reaching instinctively to touch his leg, just above his knee with gentle fingers before speaking.

“We’ve been over this. You did what you had to do. Period. That doesn’t mean you deserve to _suffer_ like this.”

His eyes are still closed and he shakes his head slowly.

“If he couldn’t see any good left in me, who the hell is going to?”

She watches the pain ebb into the lines of his face and presses her fingers harder into the place above his knee, as her own brow furrows—willing him to see him how she does, how everyone does. She knows it doesn’t work like that, knows her powers begin and end with making things shake—but _god_ does she wish she had more than comforting words.

She uses them anyway.

“ _I do_ , Lincoln.”

Silence meets her response and his expression remains unchanged and hurting—until she moves to slowly draw her hand away, and he catches it with a gentle touch—hovering his palm over hers somewhere between the two of them. He peers over at her—expression still shadowed as their skin brushes, and she turns her hand gingerly beneath his, tangling her fingers through the spaces between his fingers and squeezing tightly. His hand is cold from cradling his water glass and his eyes don’t shift from their exhaustion but he reads her expression slowly, gaze drifting purposefully over hers, before staring back into her eyes.

She knows how powerful it was, in the Afterlife—the system of people knowing what she was and telling her that she was normal, anyway. That despite what she had done, she was still a Person. That she was still good. How even when she found out they were a city structured on lies she had her team to fall back on, her team that believed in her and loved her in spite of what she thought she had become.

She wonders if Lincoln has ever heard the same words not mingled with the lies his mother fed him—been told he is Good and Human without an ulterior motive backing the words.

He looks down at her brokenly, and she thinks that he hasn’t.

“Please let me make you a meeting with him, Lincoln,” she squeezes his hand tighter between them, maintaining the contact even though her fingers are tingling. “ _Please_. This isn’t something you should struggle with alone. Let someone help _you_ this time.”

There is another pause and she can see his expression shifting and softening, along with the tightness of his hold on her. He rubs his thumb affectionately at the back of her hand, eyes still tuned to hers.

“Andrew, you said?”

She smiles.

(She checks in on him similarly the next night, and the next—until he shows up at _her_ door on the third night instead, two glasses of what appears to be apple juice balanced precariously in his hands.

“I thought I’d shake things up a little,” he teases.

She fights against the laugh that rises in her throat at his god-awful pun and loses miserably, shaking her head to show her complete disagreement with the fact he’d actually managed to draw a laugh with the shitty attempt at humor.

She has never felt more relieved to see a genuine, albeit small smile tug shyly at the corner of his lips.

“ _Apple juice_ ,” she further indulges, rolling her eyes as he passes off a glass to her, stepping aside so she can move from her room into the hall. “You really _are_ getting out of control.”

He smiles again, more hesitantly.

“You don’t mind, do you?”

He isn’t talking about the apple juice and she knows instinctively, shaking her head hard before he can even get all the words out.

She has never minded something less in her life.

“Of course I don’t.”

It is a _place_.)


End file.
